What I Learned From Hacktoberfest
To be honest, it was a bit of a rollercoaster, I love the hacktoberfest premise, but wow what a lot of negativity around it.
I can't and won't believe everyone is just out there for the shirt, though it's a cool add on.
I loved being part of it, I finished my 4 pull request + more, and here are my key takeaways
1. I learned new things
The main thing for me was learning new things, not just coding-wise, but also in how to contribute, how to write proper tests, and even make clear what my pull-request was about.
The projects I've worked on were very good at helping and communication, so big kudos to you!
2. It was fun
It was fun doing something non-work related, almost refreshing to be able to provide value to open-source.
In the beginning, I was afraid it would be a long learning curve, but it's actually easy to get started with a small issue.
3. Would you do it again?
For me yes! It took quite a lot of side-time for me, but what I picked up was more than worth it!
Also, see my article about hacktoberfest
Here are the projects I worked on:
Top comments (10)
I think given a reward system like that a lot of people is willing to game the system. For me, it's more like I get to learn to contribute to open source. Plus getting the t-shirt is a motivation but not the main reason for me to do it.
100% Max, I feel the same about it.
It's just sad the negativity you see online about it.
For me, i prefer looking at the positivity of things. There's a saying in Chinese "A journey of thousand miles, starts with a single step". I personally believe that without this campaign, there won't be alot of awareness or people who might start to contribute to open source. Even a simple task like just the cleanup of documentation is important for open source projects as well to help in the adoption of the software.
100% but there is that thin line between contributing and just being stupid about it... which I can 100% agree would annoy the owners of the software.
but you are right, let's focus on all the people that DID become better and learned something 😀
People who are just spamming/trolling/gaming the system and don't intend to make any positive contribution should get kicked out of the contest, banned for life and no t-shirt for them
In my opinion the reward (the t-shirt) is silly and redundant, people's motivation should be intrinsic!
The kickoff of hacktoberfest this year was crazy. I saw so many spam labels browsing prs on various repos. I feel bad for those maintainers. Spamming these folks spending their free time maintaining a project is not ok, it's generally not to difficult to actually find a simple, but meaningful fix somewhere.
I started doing hacktoberfest at least three years ago and it has been a great experience. It was my first time commiting to open source. It definitely got me warmed up to the flow and now I commit a few prs a month. Many times is clarifying docs, fixing nitpicky and things, but they are generally warmly welcomed.
For sure, you should want to do something constructive and learn from it.
It's also stupid to just add a word like "awesome" to a repo, what did that bring you as a person.
But well, luckily many people learn a lot from it.
Good post, I'm inspired, maybe I'll join, October is still young lol :-)
You can do it!